


hurricane

by badacts



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Coming Out, M/M, Unfortunate Hashtags, media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 10:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18519685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: Objectively, it absolutely is Steve’s fault.They’d been side-of-stage at an event waiting for an opportunity to return to their seats, and Tony had been cold, and it had been perfectly natural for Steve to pull him into his body and wrap him up in his arms. Tony certainly hadn’t protested - it had been a rare quiet moment amidst the bustle of a busy evening in their busy lives, and they’d just...stayed. Just for a little while.Which meant that some enterprising individual armed with a cellphone had plenty of time to snap a photo of them and upload it straight to Twitter.





	hurricane

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [https://itsallavengers.tumblr.com/post/183273673516/or-that-time-when-steve-forgets-theyre-in-public](url) on tumblr :)

Objectively, it absolutely is Steve’s fault.

They’d been side-of-stage at an event waiting for an opportunity to return to their seats, and Tony had been cold, and it had been perfectly natural for Steve to pull him into his body and wrap him up in his arms. Tony certainly hadn’t protested - it had been a rare quiet moment amidst the bustle of a busy evening in their busy lives, and they’d just...stayed. Just for a little while.

Which meant that some enterprising individual armed with a cellphone had plenty of time to snap a photo of them and upload it straight to Twitter. FRIDAY had taken it down within half an hour, but by then the damage had well and truly been done. 

The press crush getting out of the venue had been so bad that Tony half-seriously offered to put on the briefcase armour and fly them out of there. Steve had almost taken him up on it.

Since, ‘no comment’ has been the watchword - no confirmation, no denial - but Steve’s highly optimistic, “We’re not that interesting,” has been proven wrong so far, as has Tony’s bracing, “Let’s give it a couple of weeks, see if it dies down.” So, after a procession of increasingly stressed PR people telling them what to do, they’d made a plan.

“You sure this is going to help?”

Steve shrugs. “Tony is good with the press.”

Sam gives him a look. “Approximately fifty percent of the time, he’s good with the press.”

“He’s still batting a higher average than me,” Steve points out. Tony calls him ‘too honest for journalists’, but Steve knows for a fact that Avengers PR has instructions to keep him the hell away from any press conferences that aren’t specifically related to Avengers activity wherever possible.

“He’s less likely to punch a Fox News reporter, I’ll give him that,” Sam says. “Remind me why you couldn’t just keep on keeping on with neither-confirm-nor-deny?”

“Because civilians are curious, and the press will do anything to make money,” Steve replies. “If we confirm it, then there’s no need for speculation.”

“Bullshit. They’ll speculate on what you like in bed instead. I mean, they already know what Tony li - wow, okay, save the death glare for someone who deserves it, Cap.”

Steve looks back to the screen, where Tony is slumped back in a chair, insouciant. It’s a livestream of the conference room downstairs, the one shared by SI and the Avengers where necessary - Tony hadn’t cared, but if Steve couldn’t be there, he at least wanted this to happen on home ground.

“He’s just going to read a statement,” Steve says. “No opportunity for questions. Or issues.”

On screen, Tony perks up, shuffling his notes. “Everyone here? Can we get this started? Okay. Good morning, welcome, good to see you all. Let’s -”

A voice interrupts, brash. “Are we pretending this is related to the Avengers, or getting straight to the point?”

“For one thing, rude,” Tony replies, though he looks unruffled. “For another, in answer to your question, I have a brief statement on the Avengers’ last outing in Newark. We’ve received word that the civilians injured will make full recoveries and most have already been released from hospital. We would like to thank the fire and police departments and the EMTs for their work in preventing any fatalities-”

“Get on with it!”

Steve’s teeth are grinding:  _ this _ is why he’s up here, not down there. 

Tony points over the table at the offender. “Okay, if you wanna get thrown out of here, keep going. Otherwise, settle down. We’ll get there.”

“We want to know the truth about you and Captain America,” someone else says. Actually, now Steve thinks about it, a lot of Tony’s press conferences are conversational by nature - he says he likes to save lecturing for actual lectures.

Tony ignores this, glancing back down at his notes. “Also, to the people entrusted with the clean up, our thanks - I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Hulk with a broom, but it’s not an efficient process. We rely on you to get our cities back up and running as quickly as possible-”

“C’mon!”

Tony cuts a quick glance sideways, and Steve sees Happy slip out of his place at the edge of the shot towards the crowd. A moment later, under Tony’s seamless recitation, there’s a scuffle, a loud protest, and then someone half-jumps into frame. Steve sees Tony’s hands twitch towards Iron Man’s defensive stance before he stills them. 

The man leans half over the table, and it’s only Steve’s knowledge that Tony can protect himself in an instant that stops him from marching down there immediately.

“Can I help you?” Tony asks, in a voice which absolutely does not invite a response. He’s still slouched, but his expression has lost the geniality.

“The American public deserves to know the truth about whether you are despoiling an American Icon-”

Tony, shark-like, leans forward to the mic and so towards the man’s face. “You want the truth? Fine.  _ Captain America _ is banging me like a screen door in a hurricane. Does that answer your question?”

There’s a blissful second of silence from the assembled reporters. Then, chaos.

“...wow, okay,” Sam says. “A screen door in a hurricane, huh?”

On screen, Happy grasps the wayward asshole by the scruff and drags him out of view. Tony, smirking as he watches this, leans back in his seat and fucking  _ fingerwaves _ .

“I don’t really know what I expected here,” Steve admits.

 

* * *

The press conference does not improve from there. Steve decides, for the sake of his sanity, to stop watching pretty quickly.

“Wow,” Sam says again, into the silence once the audio switches off. “You know what? I don’t even have anything to say.”

“For someone who doesn’t have anything to say, you’re doin’ a lot of yapping,” Steve tells him, though not with any particular feeling to it. He sighs and rubs at his forehead. He never used to get headaches like this.  _ Nazis _ didn’t give him headaches like the modern media and his own partner manage to.

“It could be worse,” Sam muses.

“How?”

“Your BFF could have been watching it.”

Which is precisely when Steve’s phone bleeps menacingly in his pocket. He doesn’t even bother to check it, a move that proves prescient when it beeps again. And then again. And again. It’s either Bucky, Clint, or both, and either way he ain’t looking.

Steve gives Sam a very dry look. “You were saying?”

There’s a knock at the door, just one firm tap, and then it opens. In the doorway, Tony is already wincing. “So, yeah, that one is definitely on me.”

“Well,” Steve begins bracingly, but Tony interrupts him by pointing at Sam and then over his own shoulder.

“You, out. For once I want to have a domestic without you judging me from the sidelines.”

“I don’t judge,” Sam replies calmly.

“No, you mock. Your entire purpose on this earth is to make that face while internally mocking me.”

“Not even a little bit, Stark. But if it makes you feel better, there’s no one else on earth that gives me as much ammunition as you do.”

Tony opens his mouth to reply, but this time Steve gets to interrupt him. “Tony.”

There’s a beat, and then Tony closes his mouth and finally steps fully into the room. Sam gives them both a jaunty salute - the asshole - and slips out past him, closing the door behind himself.

Tony is that mix of defiant and anxious he gets whenever he fucks up and knows it, all bristling shoulders and a complete lack of eye contact. He says in the quiet, “This feels like being in the principal’s office. It’s been a while, but I remember. Like I’m going to get caned.”

“No one caned you as a kid.” Steve would put money on it.

“Well, no. But they wanted to.” That’s a considerably more likely scenario. “So. That one was on me.”

“To be honest, I kind of thought it was on the guy getting in your face, but okay,” Steve replies peaceably. 

Tony finally looks up and meets his eyes. After a second he loses a bit of his puffed-up quality. “You’re derailing my apology.”

“You’re shit at apologies anyway, I’m doing you a favour,” Steve says. He’s half expecting Tony to get pissed at that, but he just laughs. “Come here.”

Tony stops loitering in the doorway, inserting himself directly into Steve’s personal space. He seems unsurprised when Steve wraps an arm around his back. “You know, this is what got us in trouble in the first place. This exact thing.”

“No cameras,” Steve points out. “You did fine. Better than I would’ve.”

“You would’ve said something less sexually revealing and more righteous,” Tony replies, resting his forehead on Steve’s collarbone. “And then you would have punched him.”

“Right in the face,” Steve confirms. “With all those sharks in the room. It would have been a bloodbath.”

“Literally,” Tony says. Steve can hear the smile. “So we got off lightly, really.”

“That’s certainly how I’m looking at it,” Steve says. 

“I’ll remind you of that in an hour, when all the articles start coming out. Wait, it’s probably trending on twitter already-”

“My memory ain’t that bad, pal,” Steve says, and bops him on the underside of his chin with his free hand. When Tony looks up, aggrieved, Steve kisses him firm and warm.

Tony mumbles a protest against his mouth, but there’s nothing behind it - he folds straight away, leaning into the kiss. The last of his tension washes away, lost in the usual slow and reckless abandon of his brand of physical intimacy, a half-contrast to his quick and reckless mouth. Steve loves it wholeheartedly. Probably because he’s reckless too, in just the opposite way.

Tony’s right, though: when they get up the next morning, some smartass on the team has printed a whole host of tweets tagged ‘#HurricaneAmerica’. 


End file.
